Tests may judge dementia patients’ driving safety
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A battery of cognitive tests may help predict which people with mild dementia can still drive safely, researchers reported Monday.
In a study of older drivers with and without early-stage Alzheimer’s disease, the researchers found that drivers’ scores on tests of memory, visual processing and motor skills were good predictors of their performance on road tests.
The findings, published in the journal Neurology, suggest that doctors can use such tests to help judge which patients with mild dementia can still get behind the wheel without endangering themselves or others.
Link found between influenza, absolute humidity
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A new study by Oregon researchers has found a significant correlation between “absolute” humidity and influenza virus survival and transmission. When absolute humidity is low – as in peak flu months of January and February – the virus appears to survive longer and transmission rates increase.
Results of the study were published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Researchers have long suspected a link between humidity and flu transmission and prevalence; however, these efforts have focused on relative humidity, according to lead author Jeffrey Shaman, an Oregon State University atmospheric scientist who specializes in ties between climate and disease transmission. Relative humidity is the ratio of air water vapor content to the saturating level, which itself varies with temperature, while absolute humidity quantifies the actual amount of water in the air, irrespective of temperature.
Bar workers who smoke also benefit from smoking ban
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The health of bar workers, who actively smoke cigarettes, significantly improves after the introduction of a smoking ban, reveals research published ahead of print in Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
The findings are based on 371 bar workers from 72 Scottish bars, whose symptoms and lung function were assessed before the implementation of the ban on smoking in enclosed public places, and then two and 12 months afterwards.
In all, 191 workers underwent all three assessments, and the proportion reporting any respiratory symptoms fell from 69% to 57% after one year. The proportion of those with sensory symptoms (runny nose, red eyes, sore throat) also fell from 75% to 64%.
Pregnancy has no impact on breast cancer, but can delay diagnosis and treatment
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A new study finds women who develop breast cancer while pregnant or soon afterwards do not experience any differences in disease severity or likelihood of survival compared to other women with breast cancer. The study is published in the March 15, 2009 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.
So-called pregnancy-associated breast cancers (PABC), defined as breast cancer that develops either during or within one year following pregnancy, is relatively rare and presents a dilemma for clinicians. An estimated 0.2 to 3.8 percent of pregnancies are complicated by breast cancer, and approximately 10 percent of breast cancer patients under age 40 develop the disease during pregnancy. But as age at the time of pregnancy continues to increase, the incidence of PABC can be expected to increase.
Previous research has suggested that pregnancy is associated with poorer outcomes among women with breast cancer.
One self-help session may reduce problem drinking
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Problem drinkers may be willing to curb their habits after only a single self-help session delivered over the email or Internet, a research review suggests.
The findings, say researchers, suggest a relatively simple, low-cost way to motivate heavy drinkers to cut back.
Their analysis of 14 previously published studies found that “personalized-feedback interventions” encouraged participants, many of whom were college students, to cut back their drinking after only one session.
Growth Factor Reverses Alzheimer’s-Like Signs in Animals
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Memory loss, cognitive impairment, brain cell degeneration and cell death were prevented or reversed in several animal models after treatment with a naturally occurring protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). The study by a University of California, San Diego-led team – published in the February 8, 2009 issue of Nature Medicine – shows that BDNF treatment can potentially provide long-lasting protection by slowing, or even stopping the progression of Alzheimer’s disease in animal models.
“The effects of BDNF were potent,” said Mark Tuszynski, MD, PhD, professor of neurosciences at the UC San Diego School of Medicine and neurologist at the Veterans Affairs San Diego Health System. “When we administered BDNF to memory circuits in the brain, we directly stimulated their activity and prevented cell death from the underlying disease.”
BDNF is normally produced throughout life in the entorhinal cortex, a portion of the brain that supports memory. Its production decreases in the presence of Alzheimer’s disease. For these experiments, the researchers injected the BDNF gene or protein in a series of cell culture and animal models, including transgenic mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease; aged rats; rats with induced damage to the entorhinal cortex; aged rhesus monkeys, and monkeys with entorhinal cortex damage.
Mood disorders common in polycystic ovary syndrome
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The prevalence of depression and anxiety among patients with polycystic ovary syndrome is high and warrants routine screening and aggressive treatment, investigators report in the journal Fertility and Sterility.
In a previous study, Dr. Anuja Dokras, at the University of Pennsylvania and colleagues identified high rates of depression (35 percent) among women with PCOS, substantially higher than the 10.7 percent rate among the comparison subjects. The current report is a follow-up to that study to determine the persistence of mood disorders and the incidence of new mood disorders.
Sixty of the original 103 women participated in the second survey, conducted an average of 22 months after the first survey.
Magnesium sulfate can lower risk of cerebral palsy
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Among women who are at risk of delivering prematurely, treatment with magnesium sulfate reduces the risk of cerebral palsy in the offspring.
“For infants born very premature, there is a high risk of cerebral palsy,” study co-author Dr. Caroline Crowther, from the University of Adelaide, Australia, said in a statement. “This new Cochrane review shows there is now evidence to support giving magnesium sulfate therapy to women at risk of very preterm birth to increase their unborn baby’s chance of survival, free of cerebral palsy.”
Using data from five clinical trials involving 6145 infants who were randomly assigned to treatment of magnesium sulphate or placebo around the time of delivery, the researchers found that magnesium sulphate cut the risk of cerebral palsy by 32 percent. Moreover, treatment was also tied to a 39-percent drop in the rate of major movement disabilities.
Protein predicts chronic kidney disease progression
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In patients with chronic kidney disease that has not yet advanced, elevated levels of a protein called neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL) in the urine and blood is a strong and independent predictor of disease progression, researchers from Italy report.
Massive amounts of NGAL are released from kidney tubular cells after various injuries to the kidney, Dr. Michele Buemi and colleagues from University of Messina explain in their report published online ahead of print in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.
In a previous study, the researchers found abnormally high levels of this protein in patients who developed kidney disease and impaired kidney function. In addition, patients with higher NGAL levels had a considerably increased risk of worsening kidney function within 1 year compared with those with lower NGAL levels.
FDA lacks access to food safety records: Congress
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration lacks access to food safety tests that could have helped identify problems at a peanut plant at the center of one of the biggest food recalls in U.S. history, members of Congress said on Thursday.
The salmonella outbreak traced to a Peanut Corp. of America plant in Blakely, Georgia, has sickened more than 550 people, more than half of them children, and may be linked to eight deaths.
“We would like to have more information. There is no question,” Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, told a hearing of the Senate Agriculture Committee.
Some workplaces may alter cancer risk
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The occupation or industry in which one works may either increase or decrease risk for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, an immune system cancer often found in middle-aged adults.
An analysis of newly diagnosed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) cases diagnosed between July 1998 and June 2000 confirms previous reports of increased risk for NHL among farmers, printers, leather workers, medical professionals, and some electronic workers, researchers report in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
However, “it is not the job title or industry that causes the increased risk, but rather the specific exposures to chemical and biologic agents in the work place that may increase the risk of NHL,” Dr. Maryjean Schenk told Reuters Health.
Moderate drinking may cut seniors’ disability risk
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Healthy older adults who have up to one or two drinks per day may be less likely to develop physical disabilities over time, a new study suggests.
The study, which followed nearly 4,300 older U.S. adults, found that healthy, moderate drinkers were less likely to develop problems with walking, daily chores and other physical tasks over five years.
The benefit was not seen, however, among men and women who were in poorer health at the study’s start.
Respiratory virus common in US children: study
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A highly contagious respiratory virus is far more widespread among children than once thought and puts more of them in the hospital than influenza (flu), U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.
They projected that the respiratory syncytial virus, known as RSV, affects 2.1 million children under the age of 5 each year.
Over four years, from November through April, the virus was responsible for 20 percent of hospitalizations, 18 percent of visits to emergency rooms and 15 percent of office visits for respiratory infections in children younger than age 5 in three U.S. counties, Dr. Caroline Breese Hall of the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York and colleagues found.
“This causes hospitalization in children three times as often as influenza,” Hall said in a telephone interview.
Mistrust makes some women delay breast exam
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A lack of trust in the health care system leads many women from minority groups to delay breast cancer screening, according to results of a study reported Thursday at the American Association for Cancer Research conference on the Science of Health Care Disparities in Carefree, Arizona.
“Our medical systems, in general, have some work to do to build better-trusted relationships with racial and ethnic women,” Dr. Karen Patricia Williams from Michigan State University in East Lansing told the conference.
Williams and colleagues analyzed medical mistrust and breast cancer screening behaviors among 116 African American, 113 Latina, and 112 Arab American women who were eligible for screening; their average age was 46 years.
UCSB scientists make headway in understanding Alzheimer’s disease
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Scientists at UC Santa Barbara have discovered that a protein called BAG2 is important for understanding Alzheimer’s disease and may open up new targets for drug discovery. They are ready to move from studying these proteins in culture to finding out how they work with mice.
In a paper published this week in the Journal of Neuroscience, the scientists describe important activities of BAG2 in cleaning up brain cells. The protein tau is normally found in brain cells, but scientists don’t know why it clumps into tangles in people with Alzheimer’s disease.
Senior author Kenneth S. Kosik, co-director of UCSB’s Neuroscience Research Institute, and Harriman Chair in Neuroscience, has been involved in the study of neurons that develop neurofibrillary tangles, one of the hallmarks of the disease, since he was a postdoctoral fellow. “Early on in my career, we were one of several labs to discover that tau was in the neurofibrillary tangles,” said Kosik.
